A large number of home insurance claims are related to roof damage, or other damage (e.g., external wall damage), that was caused by elements external to the home. For example, tree damage to a home may result from high winds (e.g., hurricanes, tornadoes, downbursts, derechos, etc.), hail storms, ice storms, heavy snow, saturated soils (e.g., due to flooding), or lightning. The causes of many of these types of damage are fairly well understood. It is known, for example, that trees can be damaged by blow-over, stem failure, crown twist, root failure, branch failure and/or lightning, and that trees that have been previously damaged (e.g., by fire, wind, insects, drought, rot or decay, etc.) generally have a higher risk of failure. It is also known that certain tree species are more prone to failure than others. Typically, however, insurance companies do not account for specific risks of this sort when underwriting the risk for insurance coverage of a home. As a result, insurance coverage may be provided to individuals whose homes are at an excessively high risk of damage, and the insurer (and/or other customers) may ultimately bear a substantial portion of the resulting claim costs.
Moreover, in many cases, damage to homes could have been avoided by taking relatively low cost preventative measures, such as trimming an overhanging tree branch or removing a dead or dying tree. Nonetheless, insurance companies have historically paid claims after the damage occurs rather than paying to remove or otherwise mitigate the risk. One barrier to investing in preventative measures may be the high cost of servicing numerous, possibly small-scale and/or non-targeted risk mitigation requests. In larger-scale and/or targeted scenarios, however, risk mitigation is generally an effective way to reduce the cost of claims for both the insurance provider and the home owner. Further, home owners are typically aware that insurance companies will more likely pay out claims relating to roof or other types of damage, but may not pay for preventative maintenance. From a home owner's perspective, this approach may appear to be an unreasonable or ungainly way of dealing with risk to the home owner's property, and may inadvertently incentivize the homeowner to be complacent with respect to household maintenance.